I've been reading since a long time ago that reading hiragana only texts is quite difficult or frustrating because you don't know where a word begins or ends, I understand that and the importance of ...

I am learning hiragana and I am looking at sa, shi, su, se, so, and za, ji, zu, ze, zo. The characters look the same except the "z" characters have little strokes on the side of the character. Why is ...

Is it possible and acceptable to transcript foreign names into hiragana instead of katakana for aesthetic or other personal purposes?
How would Japanese people judge this choice? Would they perceive ...

I know that romaji is the conversion from those to the roman alphabet, but what are the differences or characteristics between katakana, kanji, and hiragana?
Are they used on a different context? Is ...

I use The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, which describes pronunciation in romaji instead of kana. I never learned romaji in a classroom, and generally only use it when reading this dictionary.
...

I've started to begin writing hiragana but I've seen many ways of writing them, usually I'm able to read the different ways of writing them but it keeps bothering me sometimes how mine and what I see ...

I'm trying to use some flash cards to learn the kana (hirigana first, but both in time), and there's simply too much for me to learn at once. Is there a recommended or practiced learning "order" or ...

I have just started learning hiragana, and am confused about the pronunciation of some of them. I have heard some pronunciation guides for け which say it should sound like kay, and some which say it ...

Just started learning japanese again.
My college offers no class on this so I am learning on my own.
I have been using Rosetta Stone on and off again for awhile now.
One this I have noticed is that ...

I already know hiragana and I am teaching myself katakana now. Both are essentially two different versions of each sound, but I am wondering if there are actually any functional differences between ...

When a Japanese-language sentence is written out in all katakana, it's supposed to be either stilted, robot-like speech or something to simulate ALL CAPS.
How is that with hiragana? Does it make te ...

I've been learning my hiragana from here:
http://yosida.com/en/hiragana.html
For the characters fu, mu, mo, na, ra, yu, and ya, I see a discrepancy between what's in the little box and what shows up ...

There is female Japanese name "Midori," and I want to know the ways I can write it. I know it means "green," but maybe the name and "green" are different words sometimes.
I used google-translator to ...

In the game Okami, the demon Yamata no Orochi is written here, and also in a separate game here as ヤマタノオロチ, not やまたのおろち. Even the particle の is in katakana. I'm curious as to why this is. I know that ...

I am currently reading a manga for studying Japanese and encountered something strange. A girl exclaims「な゛?!」
The situation is that she has just had water squirted up her nose, so I am guessing it's ...

I was wondering if there was some kind of rules to differentiate them, or if it was something we have to remember, like spelling in English.
The same question can also extend to お vs おう ; I learned ...

When looking at the hiragana ぬ (nu), ね (ne), and る (ru) one notices a small circle in the symbols. In fact that circle is the only difference when comparing them with the hiragana め (me), れ (re) and ろ ...

I've been tasked with implementing a rōmaji keyboard in a medical device. As I understand the problem, the user is to be permitted to enter katakana, hiragana, and/or kanji via the rōmaji keyboard. ...

I was looking at a chart of hiragana and trying to find the characters to form the name of a song Inochi no Namae. I started with i, then no, but there's no chi. I then started wondering where chu and ...

I'm currently learning hirgana and I was wondering what the best way was to learn it. Currently I am reading and writing each character 10 times. I was wondering if there were simple hiragana vocab ...

Writing Japanese requires a mix of Kanji and Hiragana, usually some Katakana as well.
I have read that some Kanji characters can be replaced with Hiragana characters for easier writing.
My question ...

I had the impression that 何 is pretty common kanji and that it is used in situations as above (after all, 今 is there, so it is not that it wanted to be hiragana-only). Do I understand it right that it ...

I've read that The Tale of Genji, and similar Heian-era novels such as The Pillow Book, and The Gossamer Years were predominantly or exclusively hiragana, which is also called "women's writing" (女手).
...

How to write hiragana and katakana in Windows (XP/Vista/7)? My current locale is Swedish and I have a hard time writing hiragana and katakana characters.
Usually I have a txt-file open in notepad and ...

Is it possible to tell whether a word would be written in kanji or if it would be written in hiragana without actually reading it, like it is reasonably easy to tell if a word is likely to be written ...